The Old Prospector stopped by my place yesterday. I knew right away he’d been biding time in Rosa’s Cantina. Again. So I went to the shed and pulled the canvas wrap off the jug, and we had a snort or two of Early Times, for New Times’ sake. Just to keep his spirits up.
Told me he’d been down East, in Key West, Florida, doing some night tarpon fishing and eating oysters on the half-shell. Based on his gait, I suspected he’d been fishing for Wild Turkeys as well.
OP told me he’d heard news on the flats off Key West about a $600,000 “traffic study” being commissioned by the ELP City Council. Said he got it off Marine Band 16, the distress channel. Asked what I knew about it.
Well, I don’t know much, I said. All I know is what I read online. I hear Britney Spears is in custody court again.
OP snorted, then snorted a sniff of my priceless brew, which is priceless because no one will pay for it. He said he sympathized with Eddie Holguin on the East Side, despite OP’s mule-strong prospector prejudices, but mainly because he and Eddie liked to play the horses together at Sunland Park.
“He’s got a point,” said OP, eyeing a pothole on Redd Road that increases its diameter by an inch every time a city bus passes over it.
“You know,” said OP, “there’s a hole 30 miles outside of Houston that just opened up. “I reckon it’s all the oil and gas they done drilled out of the area.”
He looked at me with a keen eye.
I got the hint.
I said so much as how everytime an El Paso politician gets a gleam in his eye, we get a sinkhole in our wallets.
“Zactly,” said OP. “They can spray paint all the lines in the road they want, but don’t mean nobody’s gonna come and work on the road.”
I thought about the now-fading spray paint on the street in front of my house, and offered OP another snort.
Then I casually mentioned the name Wayne Grinnell, casually because OP had taken out his Winchester Model 1892 Trapper to clean it. “This fella Wayne Grinnel,” I said, before shutting up real quick-like.
“He was around in 1981, or thereabouts,” said OP, eyeing me like a target on a rifle range. “He’s an apologist for New Mexico. Thinks they’ll overtake El Paso in population, money and economy.”
“So he’s crazier than an outhouse rat,” I offered.
OP didn’t answer, but he also didn’t swing the Winchester toward me. I took this as a positive, and cautiously lifted a glass to my lips.
Then I asked about Avocadoan and its observation on NIMBYness.
OP spit. “NIMBY!” he exclaimed. “Nobody knows how rich or poor the Upper Valley is! Half the people there are Caucasoid elites who would be middle-class and blue-collar in any major city. Yet here they think they’re as rich as Monte Carlo expatriates. Hell, I once ran an investment firm in the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco fer seven figures a year — and you don’t see me slinging mud at the jornaleros. The other half are working barber shops and doing landscaping as a second job. Problem is, Ann Morgan-dash-Lilly can’t figure out which lobby to pander to: the fantasizing whites or the up-and-coming browns.”
I left OP to stew in his own ethnic color palette for a minute while I checked my stocks online. When I headed back out to the tack house, he was already saddled up, and moseying out the gate in his usual fashion of nearly falling off while expertly guiding his horse to the nearest bar.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, with only a slight slur. “When’s your next batch of hooch due?”
“In 2011,” I said, hoping to see him them.
